Mailbag: Totally unsurprising 401k fraud story

I was working for Conagra and in their plan was a company stock buy/sell option. A friend and I (pre-red pill) believed we knew a lot about stocks etc. and as their stock at the time was bouncing up and down in a narrow tunnel (aka sideways channel) of about $6.00 we decided to day trade it within the 401-k.

We set up an excel spreadsheet and bought and sold at/near the tunneling lows/highs. However, our accounts never reflected the profits we showed should have been there.

Turns out the company was collecting all the buy orders and sell orders and then allocating in bulk monthly to the days most advantageous to themselves as holders of stock they were trading against us. So they would allocate our buy orders to the highest priced day of the month, and our sells to the lowest, and this ability ended up being in the rules.

Screwed again. Older, wiser, and poorer. Now I have almost $30k in a lock box behind my mini-14.